Closed-loop Recycling with Periodic Intra-profile Injection CLRPIPI

Countercurrent chromatography (CCC) refers to a chromatographic technique which allows the separation of solutes in a two-phase solvent system subjected to a gravitational field. Two immiscible liquid phases, constituted by one or more solvents or solutions, are submitted to successive equilibria, where the solutes to be separated 

From the pioneering studies of Ito et al. [117], CCC has been mainly used for the separation and purification of natural products, where it has found a large number of applications [114, 116, 118, 119]. Moreover, the potential of this technique for preparative purposes can be also applied to chiral separations. The resolution of enantiomers can be simply envisaged by addition of a chiral selector to the stationary liquid phase. The mixture of enantiomers would come into contact with this liquid CSP, and enantiodiscrimination might be achieved. However, as yet few examples have been described in the literature. 

The first partial chiral resolution reported in CCC dates from 1982 [120]. The separation of the two enantiomers of norephedrine was partially achieved, in almost 4 days, using (/ ,/ )-di-5-nonyltartrate as a chiral selector in the organic stationary phase. In 1984, the complete resolution of d,l-isoleucine was described, with N-dodecyl-L-proline as a selector in a two-phase buffered n-butanol/water system containing a copper (II) salt, in approximately 2 days [121]. A few partial resolutions of amino acids and dmg enantiomers with proteic selectors were also published [122, 123]. 

However, it was not until the beginning of 1994 that a rapid ( 1.5 h) total resolution of two pairs of racemic amino acid derivatives with a CPC device was published [124]. The chiral selector was A-dodecanoyl-L-proline-3,5-dimethylanilide (1) and the system of solvents used was constituted by a mixture of heptane/ethyl acetate/methanol/water (3 1 3 1). Although the amounts of sample resolved were small (2 ml of a 10 inM solution of the amino acid derivatives), this separation demonstrated the feasibility and the potential of the technique for chiral separations. Thus, a number of publications appeared subsequently. Firstly, the same chiral selector was utilized for the resolution of 1 g of ( )-A-(3,5-dinitrobenzoyl)leucine with a modified system of solvents, where the substitution of water by an acidified solution 

Recently, two examples of the separation of enantiomers using CCC have been published (Fig. 1-2). The complete enantiomeric separation of commercial d,l-kynurenine (2) with bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a chiral selector in an aqueous-aqueous polymer phase system was achieved within 3.5 h [128]. Moreover, the chiral resolution of 100 mg of an estrogen receptor partial agonist (7-DMO, 3) was performed using a sulfated (3-cyclodextrin [129, 130], while previous attempts with unsubstituted cyclodextrin were not successful [124]. The same authors described the partial resolution of a glucose-6-phosphatase inhibitor (4) with a Whelk-0 derivative as chiral selector (5) [129]. 

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Closed-loop Recycling with Periodic Intra-profile Injection (CLRPIPI)... 

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